As a Japanese national, I have been concerned with peoples around us, Koreans
and Chinese. But I have to add the very peoples inside Japan, the Aynu
People and the Ryukyu People. Anthropologists say they are classified as
the Jomon people who had moved from the southern area of Asia into the
Japan islands some thousands of years earlier than the Yayoi People who
moved from the northern Asia through Korean Peninsula.

Anthropologists say the present Japanese are the mixed people of those
two types, the Jomon and the Yayoi. The ratio of mixed blood differ depending
on the areas we live. The average ratio of the Jomon and the Yayoi for
the modern Japanese is 2 : 8. The west area of Japan like Kansai Area finds
more of the Yayoi properties while the east side of Japan like Tohoku Area
sees more of the Jomon characteristics. And the Aynu and the Ryukyu show
100 percent of the Jomon properties. What do those facts mean?

Once when I was a little kid some 40 years ago, my sister Kazuyo, six years
older than I, used to say the Aynu were a White People. And I believed
that because their faces were totally different from ours. They were bearded
with thick wavy hair, which led European scholars to believe that the Aynu
were a Caucasian people (Smithonian Institution 1997). Some people still
believe in this childish idea. .
But what really interests me now is their language, the Aynu language.
Obviously it belongs to the Jomon language, which you cannot hear any more,
may live in Aynu and in Japanese, though the modern Japanese syntax has
been said to apply to those of the Altaic. From now I would like to keep
you visitors to my page informed of the Aynu People and their culture.
--- tommy.

Tommy reported the following on the 4th International Conference on Computer
Processing for KOREAN Language(ICCKL '99) held in Yanbian China by answering
the four questions from Professor Kim Kwang Ok at Suwon University.
以下の文章は、今年（９９年）８月１２日、中国・Yanbian市で開かれた「第４回 コリアンコンピュータ処理国際学術会議」に於いて、水原大学のキム・クァンオク教授の４つの質問に対し、私（富田 隆）が電話で答えたアイヌ民族とその言語に関する講演原稿(英語）です。

English original

Translated into Japanese

Question 1The
Present Situation of the Ainu People

1-1 Ainu
population

24,381 in Hokkaido and 514 in Tokyo. (Figures are the
result of a 1986 cooperative survey.)

The Obvious existence of
discriminatory and prejudicial attitude toward the Ainu in Japanese society
prevented obtaining an exact number for their population. The numbers obtained
by the Ainu people who took part in this survey in 1986 are 24,381 in Hokkaido
and 514 in Tokyo. Estimates of the Tokyo Ainu population run as high as
2700.

1-2 Ainu Language

1-2-1 Current Use

The
Ainu language expresses the rich heritage of "Yukar ," an oral tradition
literature. Yukar incorporates many stories told in verses, and deserves to be
listed among the world's great literature heritages. The Ainu language is
supposed to have been spoken in Tohoku, Hokkaido, Southern Karafuto (Sakhalin),
Chishima islands , or southern tips of Kamchatka Peninsula.

But as of
1979, there were as few as nine Ainu who could speak the language fluently.
Native speakers were confined to older Ainu living in Hokkaido. As of 1999, the
Ainu language should be considered to have become extinct with regard to
everyday conversational use.

But recently, along with the campaign for
establishing Ainu New Law, the campaign for the restoration of the Ainu People
and their language is being earnestly promoted in Tokyo and Osaka as well as in
many places in Hokkaido. A unified textbook of the Ainu language has been issued
and some nice dictionaries designed for beginners are on the market
now.

The syllable structure of Hokkaido dialects is
of two kinds: CV and CVC; while that of Karafuto dialect is of three kinds, with
the option of CVV, where VV is a long vowel, such as "ii" or "aa" or "ee." (
C=consonant V=vowel )

Syllable-final consonants p, t, and k remain
articulated, but become silent and unaspirated, which frequently happen in
Korean. However, in the Karafuto dialect syllable final p, t, and k become
h.

In Hokkaido dialects, except for dialects such as the Miboro or Samani
dialects, some words are distinguished by difference in tone: high or low ;
while in the Karafuto dialect, the difference in vowel length - long or short -
marks the same distinction, in keeping with the old style of the Ainu
language.

The Ainu language has an oral tradition. When reading verses, a
special style is used that is different from that of the spoken language (
conversational style.) The use of the more complicated form is characteristic of
the oral literature style of verse.

1-2-3 Syntax

The Ainu
language is an agglutinative language - one whose syntax features the placing of
affixes or particles onto individual words.

As for the word order, the
subject and object come before the predicate verb, and particles follow the
subject and object as suffixes. as in Japanese. Modifiers appear before the
words they modify. However, unlike Japanese, a negatived affix is placed just
ahead of the verb. (This happens in Korean language, though it can choose either
way to put negatives into a sentence.)

1-3 Ainu Culture and Life

1-3-1 Campaign for Ainu Restoration

As a result of the
assimilation policy established in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) by the Japanese
government , the original Ainu culture is not visible in daily life
basis.

But with the tenacious campaign by both the Ainu People with
Kayano Shigeru, former Councilor of the Japanese Diet, as their leader, and the
general Japanese nationals who support the Ainu restoration, a new legislation
generally known as the Ainu New Law was established in 1997. The new law
acknowledges the Ainus as predecessors in the Japanese islands.

Also, a
wide variety of Japanese nationals campaign for succession of the Ainu culture
from generation to generation by holding Ainu cultural festivals in many places
in Japan, for instance.

1-3-2 Tradition of Daily Life

Original Ainu life is based upon hunting and fishery. In the famous
"Iomante Fesitival," the Ainu send the spirit of the bear to the world of thier
gods, reflecting their animism.

Depending upon their geographical
environment and seasons, the Ainu caught salmon deer or sea life, and ate these
supplemented by wild grass and mushrooms. They built their houses from wood and
grass, and made their clothing from bark or animal fur. Thus they were able to
be self-sufficient in most of their daily necessities.

The
recorded dialects are classified into three major dialects: Hokkaido, Karafuto
and Chishima. Hokkaido dialect may then be divided into five regions including
Northern (Souya), Eastern (Kushiro, Kitami, Tokachi and Hidaka-East), Middle
(Ishikari, Teshio), Southern (Hidaka-West, Tanshin), and finally South-Western
(Goshi). Among Karafuto dialects Taraika dialect (East Coast) is said to be
remarkable. But a genuine study has not been done yet about classification of
dialects in the Ainu language.

2-2 Classic and Modern Ainu
Language

The languages in the Ainu epic "Yukar" differ from those of
daily life in words and phrases. Narrators of yukar sit at the fireside and
recite the adventure stories of a boy all night, beating the fireside with a
stick called "repni. "

2-3 The Origin of the Ainu Language

The origin of the Ainu language is indistinct. The language has been
considered to be associated with a wide variety of languages from Indo-European,
Altaic, Austronesian as well as Japanese or Korean.

The language has also
been considered to be one of the old Asian languages along with Siberian
languages or the languages in Karafuto. Written Ainu use no ancient characters,
nor does it use an original character system.

Since the 17th century, it
has been recorded using Japanese Kana , the Roman alphabet, or Cyrillic
characters. Its language structure resembles that of Altaic, except for the
existence of prefixes e-, ko-, and o- , and its characteristic as an
incorporating language.

Some scholars say the resemblance of Ainu
language to Japanese and Korean cannot be considered a coincidence, and that the
three languages once had a common ancestral language called "East Asian Old
Language."

2-4 Writing System

Presently, the Ainu language
is written with the use of Japanese Kana and the Roman alphabet. Its writing
system has been considerably unified and its actual pronunciation is consistent
with the written documents. (The actual pronunciation of Korea's hangul
characters often differs from that of the written document, which annoys foreign
students of the Korean language. )

Foreign words are usually written just
as is done in Japanese. For example, computer is written as konpyuta. But there
is no definite way to express foreign words..

Collection of the
Epic Ainu Yukar, Volumes 1-9. Recorded by an Ainu woman named Kannari Matsu
(1959-66). She left 160-odd notebooks in which Yukar was transcribed in Roman
letters to her nephew Chiri Mashiho and her scholar friend Kindaichi
Kyosuke.

About Kannari Matsu: She is an Ainu and a Christian preacher.
Her Ainu name is Imekano. While working as a preacher, she became the successor
to her mother's Yukar epic.

Collections of the Ainu Chants, Chiri
Yukie (1923). Yukie was a real niece of Kannari Matsu and a sister of Chiri
Mashiho. Later she was adopted by Matsu. She died young at nineteen while
working as a proofreader under Kyosuke. This book deserves historical
significance as the first genuine record of Ainu chants by an
Ainu.

Study of Place Names, Yamada Hidezo (1982).

3-2
Oral Records

There are a considerable number of oral records of the
Ainu language, but most of them are rather difficult for most people to obtain.
Some are available on the internet or in print.

When written with the Roman alphabet, the Ainu
language can be expressed easily using the standard ASCII keyboard. But with
Japanese Kana, some characters - for example, Japanese small letters such as
"ku" and "pu" - sounded as "k" and "p" in the Ainu language respectively -
cannot be expressed in the current JIS code. (JIS = Japan Industrial
Standard)

At present the JIS code for Chinese characters, however, is
under revision work, and is supposed to include these small Kana for Ainu
writing purposes.

Even if new code for the Ainu writing system were added
to the JIS standard, a successful writing system would not result unless
operating system manufacturers supported its integration into input and output
devices and the corresponding word-processing software. It is a pity that there
isn't the slightest sign of their efforts, however much expected. Computerizing
the Ainu language, therefore, will lag behind.

Unfortunately, it is
doubtful that the demand for the Ainu language will be great enough to spur its
commercial application.

The semantic fields are extracted from facts of language (Walter
Porzig);

Anthropological and ethnographic literature devoted to the
culture under study can be used for interpretation only to the extent that it
elucidates meaning of different culture-specific concepts, which is encountered
directly in the considered texts. In short, it is both possible and necessary to
use assorted literature on the culture under study, but the object of research
should be specific texts. If there are two disputable interpretations, the
dispute should always be decided for the benefit of that interpretation which
has arisen directly from research of the texts, instead of from ethnography and
anthropology.2. Basic
Paleolinguistic Method

Suppose we have some texts on
some language X, which serves some culture X.

We need to elucidate
concepts as understood in the given culture X; forexample, space and
time.

For this purpose we have to do the following:

a) We list
from the texts everything related to time, and in another list everything
related to space;

b) We grade the lexicon in these two lists on semantic
fields; number and patterns language X suggests;

c) Statistics (frequency
analysis) is useful because it allows us to identify the most relevant cultural
constants. But when we have only incidentally selected texts, the meaning and
value of this method is lacking. Only as quantity increases can such text be
used for statistical purposes, and only as long as we have not considered all
texts in general on the language X. The texts can be selected by a random
sampling, so the most important keywords for comprehending this culture in all
samplings would be encountered just sometimes.

d) In short, a lexicon
which is interesting for us is simply structured on semantic fields, and
statistics plays the slave role. We are not interested in how many of this or
that spatial or temporal markers we encounter in the texts; we are interested in
the relationship between number of markers of the given semantic field to the
total number of markers identified from these texts.

3. The Aynu World

Applying the above described method to the material
presented in "Aynu Folklore" by N.A. Nevski - Aynu folklore narratives collected
by Nefu-san on the island of Hokkaido in the first quarter of the 20th century -
we come to following conclusions: The world in Aynu language can be classified
into eight semantic fields:

1

atuy, rep ( ocean )

2

kim, nupuri ( mountain )

3

cise ( dwelling )

4

kotan ( settlement )

5

mosiri ( island )

6

pet ( river )

7

aynu mosiri ( land of aynu=people)Toponyms and anthroponyms also
must be considered as a part of this semantic field.

8

Kamuy mosiri ( land of kamuy ) has the same structure as the semantic
field of Aynu mosiri; furthermore it is possible to distinguish a field of parts
of the human body and clothing, and a field of anthroponyms - position or place
indicators.

The largest semantic field is that of
ocean, for it includes all other semantic fields in such a way as the island is
included within the ocean, the settlement on the island, the dwelling in the
settlement. Thus the semantic field of ocean is the most highly
structured.Cise, kotan, mosiri are semantic fields that organize the space.
They have the same structures, for they all have head (pa) and back (kes) in
their scheme.And river is the mediator between mosiri pa and mosiri kes (
more exactly between atuy and kim).Kim is a continuous (non-discret) spatial
object. And in this connection kim is absolutely opposite to atuy.Kamuy
mosiri is just another island in my understanding,A lot of toponyms indicate
that Aynu space was very concrete.

"Mountain" is not associated with "top", so is not used with the
verbs "to climb/to ascend" (rikim), or "to go up" (hopuni, hopumba). The verbs
usually used with mountain are "to go" (arapa, paye), or "to leave/to depart"
(kuta). At the same time, "sea" and "river" are used in all cases with the verbs
"to descend", "to condescend" (san,sap).

Only in one case are they used
with the verb "to run out" (osma), which means running or jumping out from some
contained or closed space. It is necessary also to mention the very relevant
word "hemakasi wa" (homakasi), which means "from the mountains" (for example,
wind blowing from the mountains to the sea). However in a literal translation
"hemakasi" means "back, to mountains", i.e. from the sea; that is very
indicative. Four words for identification of the sea were selected
andallocated: pis, atuy, rep and ruru.

Thus it is possible to state
that the primary spatial reference points of Aynu relate to sea and river.
Furthurmore, the outcome of applying the paleolinguistic methodology indicates
an absence of an organizing center or world/global mass; i.e. the amorphism of
spatial pattern in the Aynu world.

It is
necessary also to note the fact that, although V.M. Alpatov writes about the
absence in the Aynu language of the category of tense: "The category of tense
absent, the same verbal forms can refer to past, present or future" [Alpatov
1997 P.131]; this is not absolutely correct, because within the Aynu language is
a rather definite and visible system of the analytical aspect-tense forms formed
through using special function words and different auxiliaries. Alpatov doesn't
consider this aspect of Aynu itak.